“DRM is Used to Lock in, Control and Spy on Users”

https://torrentfreak.com/drm-is-used-to-lock-in-control-and-spy-on-users-161108/

by cheiVia0 • 10 years ago

246 55 10 years ago

Interestingly copyright industry has grown to be one of the greatest enemies of the democracy and freedom of speech.

I think that the shame is shared though as too many people started to disrespect the right of the authors to get a fair share for their work.

It still does not follow that we should prefer rights of the authors over more general civil rights.

If the choice is between authors not getting paid and freedom of expression, or any other more important right, we should choose the last.

syshum10• 10 years ago

>disrespect the right of the authors to get a fair share for their work.

Because there is no right or "fair share".

Creators have only the right to ask for money for their works, they have no right to compensation at all.

Further from an American Legal perspective there is no "choice is between authors not getting paid and freedom of expression" the constitutional reason for copyright, patent and trademark is to promote free expression. That is the sole reason the government was empowered to create copyright law in the first place. to the extent that copyright becomes detrimental to free expression it becomes unconstitutional

cheiVia0• 10 years ago

Have there been any challenges to copyright on constitutional grounds?

If not, at what point might that happen?

eveningcoffee5• 10 years ago

Because there is no right or "fair share".

And there lies the problem, I think. Or perhaps maybe I did not express myself precisely enough. So this is another take.

Everyone has right to ask and receive a compensation for their work. Nobody should be forced to work for unfair compensation. I do not know if this is written in your constitution, this is just something in what I believe.

I believe that generally the justification for DRM arises from the second sentence. What I expressed was that if the measures used to safeguard this position interfere with other more important rights then we should value more important rights and accept that some work may not be created.

We can not force somebody to work for free, but we can accept that some work will not be created.

Creators have only the right to ask for money for their works, they have no right to compensation at all.

Does this mean that if you do not accept what they ask for their work, you still will have the right to use their work?

falcolas9• 10 years ago

Creators have only the right to ask for money for their works, they have no right to compensation at all.

Similarly, we as consumers have no inherit right to view or use their work without paying the creator's asking price. Nor do we have the right to force the creators to create work.

IOW, the only way to really motivate creators to create is to compensate them somehow (money works great). Capitalism at work.

imtringued• 10 years ago

The problem with the copyright lobbyism is that it affects not just Disney but everyone else. Right now nothing will ever reach the public domain through copyright expiration.

It would be okay if copyright law had a short duration like 10 years but a way to extend the copyright term by another 10 years for a flat fee that keeps up with inflation. It doesn't have to be an increasing fee. The point of this fee is to check whether a business can still extract money out of their IP. If they can't then release it to the public domain.

If Mickey Mouse is a cash cow that lasts forever then so be it.

marcosdumay• 10 years ago

copyright industry has grown to be one of the greatest enemies of the democracy and freedom of speech

And there I don't know if you are talking about the noble trying to stop Illuminism at the beginning of our times, facists (actual ones) trying to stop the press at the beginning of the last century, or about nowadays.

Anyway, one could consider it interesting, but hardly surprising.

About the modern version, the Trusted Computing Consortium, that is the ones that invented DRM and mostly the ones pushing for it until today (but with the consortium disintegrated) placed in the predicted use cases of their technology self destructing documents before even movies that couldn't be copied. That should be enough to understand what people want DRM for.

(It should, but interesting that it was not. People mostly reacted to the idea of self destructing documents as "Of course that won't be used to organize crimes and destroy the evidence! What kind of paranoid are you?" Personally I'm the kind of paranoid person that 20 years later still couldn't discover any other use for self destructing documents - but that's me.)

eveningcoffee5• 10 years ago

One of my fears is that the technology we make would drastically reduce the entry level into a sophisticated organized crime.

yuhong• 10 years ago

I have been thinking of why this happened. I wonder what would have happened if DAT was invented before the record industry consolidated in the 1970s for example.

Fifer82• 10 years ago

Can't argue with my friend. "If DRM then Warez".

shmerl• 10 years ago

Indeed it is. But somehow the push to reform DMCA and repeal 1201 isn't strong enough. Why would anyone sensible (besides corrupted control freaks who designed that) not stand against this garbage?

criddell• 10 years ago

I think their argument would be stronger if DRM opponents were more specific when talking about harms.

For example, DRM is used to spy on users. The article notes that DRM'd software can maintain a connection with a server and user actions are reported and recorded on the server. They need to go one step further and explain why this is bad and list some of the real damage that has caused.

If they don't, it sounds more hypothetical and people just aren't going to get all that bothered by it.

cowardlydragon• 10 years ago

So many legal lawyers here.

If the numerical representation of content can be arbitrarily shifted via encoding, encryption, or masking, how can anything be copyrightable?

DRM itself encrypts and morphs the numerical representation, thus obscuring its precise identification.

anonbanker• 10 years ago

...as opposed to nonlegal lawyers?

marmshallow• 10 years ago

The numerical representation of the content is not what's in question. It's the user-perceived content.

Let's say you take the contents of a book, add an extra space between some words, then compress/hash the new contents. The numerical representation could be completely different, but the user-perceived content is the same.

Sorry to get all legally lawful on over your ass, but the law of the land (and common sense) dictates that the new contents are still the works of the original author even though the numerical representation is completely different.

“DRM is Used to Lock in, Control and Spy on Users”

Related Stories